From Anatolia to Aceh: Ottomans, Turks, and Southeast Asia(200 Proceedings of the British Academy)

Southeast Asia has long been connected by trade, religion and political links to the wider world across the Indian Ocean, and especially to the Middle East through the faith of Islam. However, little attention has been paid to the ties between Muslim Southeast Asia - encompassing the modern nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and the southern parts of Thailand and the Philippines - and the greatest Middle Eastern power, the Ottoman empire. The first direct political contact took place in the 16th century, when Ottoman records confirm that gunners and gunsmiths were sent to Aceh in Sumatra to help fight against the Portuguese domination of the pepper trade. In the intervening centuries, the main conduit for contact between these two regions was the annual Hajj pilgrimage, and many Malay pilgrims from Southeast Asia spent long periods of study in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which were under Ottoman control from 1517 until the early 20th century. During the period of European colonial expansion in the 19th century, once again Malay states turned to Istanbul for help. It now appears that these demands for intervention from Southeast Asia may even have played an important role in the development of the Ottoman policy of Pan-Islamism, positioning the Ottoman emperor as Caliph and leader of Muslims worldwide and promoting Muslim solidarity. The papers in this volume represent the first attempt to bring together research on all aspects of the relationship between the Ottoman world and Southeast Asia - political, economic, religious and intellectual - much of it based on documents newly discovered in archives in Istanbul.

Table of Contents:
1: A.C.S. Peacock and Annabel Teh Gallop: Introduction. Islam, Trade and Politics Across the Indian Ocean: Imagination and Reality 2: Anthony Reid, Rum and Jawa: The Vicissitudes of Documenting a Long-distance Relationship The political and economic relationship from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries 3: Jorge Santos Alves: From Istanbul with Love: Rumours, Conspiracies and Commercial Competition in Aceh-Ottoman Relations (1550s to 1570s) 4: A.C.S. Peacock: The Economic Relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth Century 5: Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells: Hadhrami Mediators of Ottoman Influence in Southeast Asia 6: Isaac Donoso: The Ottoman Caliphate and Muslims of the Philippine Archipelago during the Early Modern Era Interactions in the Colonial Era 7: Ismail Hakki Kadi: The Ottomans and Southeast Asia Prior to the Hamidian Era: A Critique of Colonial Perceptions of Ottoman-Southeast Asian Interaction 8: Ismail Hakki Goksoy: Acehnese Appeals for Ottoman Protection in the Late Nineteenth Century 9: William Clarence-Smith: Middle Eastern States and the Philippines under Early American Rule, 1898-1919 10: Amrita Malhi: "We Hope to Raise the Bendera Stambul": British Forward Movement and the Caliphate on the Malay Peninsula 11: Chiara Formichi: Indonesian Readings of Turkish History (1890s-1940s) Cultural and intellectual influences 12: Vladimir Braginsky: Representation of the Turkic-Turkish Theme in Traditional Malay Literature, with Special Reference to the Works of the Fourteenth to Mid-Seventeenth Centuries 13: Oman Fathurahman: New Textual Evidence for Intellectual and Religious Connections between the Ottomans and Aceh 14: Ali Akbar: The Influence of Ottoman Qur'ans in Southeast Asia through the Ages

About the Author :
Andrew Peacock is at University of St Andrews. Annabel Teh Gallop is at The British Library.

Review :
The editors have done a remarkable job here in bringing together the work of historians and philologists to produce a volume of studies tightly focused along clearly defined axes of interaction between the two regions. Their efforts have produced a book that makes significant and meaningful contributions to our understandings of these trans-regional dynamics in the history of Southeast-Asia ... this fine volume will certainly serve as an important resource for work on this and other aspects of connection between the two regions in the future. R. Michael Feener, Southeast Asian Studies The study of Ottoman influences on Muslim Southeast Asia has long been a dauntingly specialized field. In light of its linguistic, archival, and historiographic complexity, the field is likely to remain specialized and dauntingly multidisciplinary for some time to come. But it is precisely this complexity that makes this book's synthesis and depth such a welcome achievement, and a work important for all scholars intrigued by the history of Ottoman connections to Muslim Southeast Asia. Robert W. Hefner, Indonesia journal